Why Is It So Cold in Europe? Does This Mean Global Warming Isn't Real?

Well, before we get into the details, look very quickly at two key words in the title — ‘Europe’ and ‘Global” (hint, hint).

As I just reported earlier today, November was the hottest November on record. However, as I know (I live here), it’s been pretty cold in Europe lately. To a lot of people, I’m sure that is more ‘proof’ that global warming isn’t happening…. Except that it isn’t proof of this at all. (And, of course, we haven’t seen any anti-global warming proof yet, in general, to counter the mountains and mountains of global warming proof documented around the world.)

Also, if you look at global temperature anomaly data, you’ll see that there are some areas of the world that are colder than average, but a lot more that are warmer than average. The point is that global warming (at this point, at least) means that the globe as a whole is warming, but not necessarily every location on Earth every month.

Figure 1: (a) January-November surface air temperature anomaly in GISS analysis, (b) November 2010 anomaly using only data from meteorological stations and Antarctic research stations, with the radius of influence of a station limited to 250 km to better reveal maximum anomalies.

Figure 2: Global surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 mean for (a) annual and 5-year running means, and (b) 60-month and 132-month running means. In (a) the 2010 point is a preliminary 11-month anomaly. Green vertical bars are two-standard-deviation error estimates, as discussed in our Reviews of Geophysics paper.

Anyway, why is it so cold in Europe?

NASA discusses this issue in more depth than I have the expertise to do, and it provides a good long-term graph to go with this discussion as well:

Back to the cold air in Europe: is it possible that reduced Arctic sea ice is affecting weather patterns? Because Hudson Bay (and Baffin Bay, west of Greenland) are at significantly lower latitudes than most of the Arctic Ocean, global warming may cause them to remain ice free into early winter after the Arctic Ocean has become frozen insulating the atmosphere from the ocean. The fixed location of the Hudson-Baffin heat source could plausibly affect weather patterns, in a deterministic way — Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream, thus producing a cold European anomaly in the trans-Atlantic seesaw. Several ideas about possible effects of the loss of Arctic sea ice on weather patterns are discussed in papers referenced by Overland, Wang and Walsh.

However, we note in our Reviews of Geophysics paper that the few years just prior to 2009-2010, with low Arctic sea ice, did not produce cold winters in Europe. The cold winter of 2009-2010 was associated with the most extreme Arctic Oscillation in the period of record. Figure 3, from our paper, shows that 7 of the last 10 European winters were warmer than the 1951-1980 average winter, and 10 of the past 10 summers were warmer than climatology. The average warming of European winters is at least as large as the average warming of summers, but it is less noticeable because of the much greater variability in winter.

Finally, we point out in Figure 3 the anomalous summer warmth in 2003 and 2010, summers that were associated with extreme events centered in France and Moscow. If the warming trend that is obvious in that figure continues, as is expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase, such extremes will become common within a few decades.

Figure 3: Temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 for the European region defined by 36°N-70°N and 10°W-30°E.

Zach is the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular cleantech-focused website in the world, and Planetsave, a world-leading green and science news site. He has been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and he has been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, and wind energy since 2009.
Aside from his work on CleanTechnica and Planetsave, he's the founder and director of Solar Love, EV Obsession, and Bikocity.
To connect with Zach on some of your favorite social networks, go to ZacharyShahan.com and click on the relevant buttons.

Advertisement

Our EV Driver Report

Electric Vehicle Reviews

Electric Vehicle News

Solar Energy News

Tesla News

The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Enterprises Media, Inc., its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries. Privacy Policy